Theologian and author John Piper addressed a listener’s fear of eternity becoming monotonous, explaining why Heaven, despite its boundlessness, will never become boring for those who trust in Christ in a recent episode of his “Ask Pastor John” podcast.
“‘Pastor John, I have been struggling with the concept of eternity lately,’” a listener named Mason said. “‘I started reading Randy Alcorn’s book about Heaven. … At first, I had difficulty imagining what Heaven could be like, even for a short time. But after reading, I began to understand joy for thousands, millions, or even billions of years. However, even a hundred trillion years still seems nothing in light of eternity. I struggle to process something with no end. How will we not get bored?’”
Piper, the longtime pastor and founder of Desiring God ministries, first acknowledged that Mason’s question reflects a universal human dilemma.
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“Yes, it is [hard to grasp],” Piper said. “It is beyond question that eternity — whether we conceive of it as time without beginning or ending, or whether we conceive of it as a dimension beyond time, timelessness — is hard to grasp. I mean, I don’t even know what grasp means when it comes to something like that.”
Referencing Ecclesiastes 3:11, the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said the Bible itself validates this mystery.
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“God ‘has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.’ It seems to me that the least that verse means is that God intends for us to be aware of a reality of a kind of eternal time or non-time that is not fully comprehensible.”
Quoting C.S. Lewis, Piper added, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Still, Piper stressed that God has not left believers without clues: “It’s not as though God simply says, ‘There’s an eternity coming; you’re going to live in it, so trust me’ — but that’s all he says. There are so many places in the Bible where God seems bent on trying to help us trust him by giving us pointers.”
One such pointer, the Don’t Waste Your Life author explained, comes from Revelation 21:18, where the new Jerusalem is described as “pure gold, like clear glass.” Drawing on a sermon by Jonathan Edwards, Piper emphasized that this gold “as clear as glass” has no earthly equivalent.
“There is nothing upon Earth that will suffice to represent to us the glories of Heaven,” Piper said, explaining that the Bible’s language is purposefully strange to stretch imaginations toward what cannot now be seen.
Citing 1 Corinthians 15, Piper spoke about the transformation believers will experience at the resurrection. “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. … It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
“That’s like clear gold: a spiritual body,” Piper said. “We are going to be embodied persons, and yet, embodied in a way that is […] incomprehensibly unlike our present bodies. You won’t ever run out of the ability to see glory, be amazed, be refreshed, be thrilled forever.”
He reminded listeners that resurrected believers “will have a body perfectly suited to eternal, supernatural, unimaginable pleasures — a body so unfathomably more capable of enjoyment than you could ever imagine.”
Piper pointed to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:24–26, in which Christ asks the Father that His followers would be with Him, see His glory, and love him with the very love the Father has for the Son.
“‘The love with which you have loved me may be in them,’” Piper quoted from verse 26. “Is that not a prayer that God the Father will give to us … the capacity to love and enjoy God the Son with the very capacity that the Father has to love the Son, which is infinite?”
He continued: “The capacity that has kept the Trinity in infinite happiness for eternity will be shared with us. … God has given us many helps in the Bible to feed that trust with expectation. He helps us again and again to adjust our thinking and our expectations concerning the never-ending glory of eternal joy in his presence.”
Piper often weighs in on the topic of Heaven and Hell, particularly as biblical literacy around the afterlife continues to drop.
A 2023 Gallup survey of 1,011 adults found that just 67% expressed belief in Heaven compared to 83% in 2001.
Similarly, a 2020 survey found that 52% of professing Christians in the United States believe good works will get them into Heaven, while another survey found that at least a third of senior pastors in the U.S. believe one can earn a place in Heaven by simply being a good person.
In a 2023 episode of “Ask Pastor John,” Piper said he believes Christians will work in Heaven — but the work will be so “profoundly satisfying and sweet and enjoyable” that nobody in the world to come will say, “I need a weekend.”
He previously shared that God created work to be a blessing, not a curse. Work in Heaven will be as it was before the fall: “thrilling, satisfying, creative.”
In a recent sermon, Jack Hibbs, senior and founding pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California, painted a vivid picture of Heaven as a dynamic, exciting place of discovery.
“When you and I are in eternity with God, it will be for you and I a time endless discovery,” he said. “God has created you, the human being, with an overwhelming passion to discover. Our hearts are thrilled with the possibility of discovery. It’s what drives all the sciences, all the disciplines. It drives curiosity. And Heaven is going to be like that for us.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
